Stranded animal coordinator Jody Westberg, center, guides an elephant seal on a lift as it came into Sea World emaciated, malnourished, dehydrated and possibly with pneumonia after it was captured on Moonlight Beach in Encinitas. At left is senior animal ...
— John Gastaldo

Stranded animal coordinator Jody Westberg feeds elephant seals who are being nursed back to health at Sea World after being rescued somewhere in the county. When these elephant seals grow up they will tip the scales at several thousand pounds.
— John Gastaldo

Tales of daring marine mammal rescues seem to pop up in local headlines with surprising regularity. “Rescuers free sea lion tangled in fishing wire.” “Bullet removed from sea lion in distress.” “Wounded sea lion, seal are returned to ocean.”

For years, SeaWorld San Diego, not to mention local TV news crews, have been documenting the derring-do of the marine park cares for distressed animals and returns them to the wild once they’ve recovered.

Now, at least some of that video will be reprised as part of a new weekend television show airing on ABC stations across the country.

The TV series, “Sea Rescue,” produced by New York-based Litton Entertainment, will highlight the work of the SeaWorld marine parks in each of 13 episodes that will launch Sat., April 7. Hosting the half-hour show will be “Good Morning America” weather anchor Sam Champion. In San Diego County, “Sea Rescue” will come on at 9:30 a.m. on KGTV-Channel 10.

While the producers are hoping uplifting stories about rescued sea lions and whales that have been shot, punctured, malnourished or tangled in fishing wire will be a ratings grabber, this is a reality show quite distinct from the entertaining, lighthearted antics that are typical of the parks’ daily Shamu shows.

“I balance out the responsibility of doing programming about animals with the reality that I’m judged by my ratings, and this subject matter of rescue and rehabilitation is very emotional,” said Dave Morgan, president of Litton Entertainment. “There’s a tremendous flash point for people’s emotions where they can see the interaction between man and animal.

“There’s a beginning, middle and end to any story, which I look to as a producer, and I can very easily put this into a half-hour television format.”

The idea for the show originated with SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment’s corporate entertainment team, which subsequently pitched it to Litton, a privately held production and distribution company that has had experience developing a number of popular animal-oriented programs that currently air as a block of programming on Saturday mornings.

“Jack Hanna’s Wild Countdown” and “Ocean Mysteries with Jeff Corwin” are among the other shows that fill out the “Weekend Adventure” package.

Over the course of 13 “Sea Rescue” episodes, each of which will repeat once, rescues conducted primarily by personnel from the San Diego and Orlando parks will be featured. While the last episodes have not been finalized, San Diego-initiated rescues will be showcased in a large number of the programs, Morgan confirmed.

In more than four decades, the San Diego park has been involved with as many as 6,000 rescues, and its rate of success in saving the animals is 70 percent, according to SeaWorld mammals supervisor Jody Westberg. The most commonly rescued animals are California sea lions. So far this year, the park has rescued 29 sea lions, 5 elephant seals, and 2 harbor seals.

One of the more memorable rescue efforts that will occupy the show’s entire third episode was one of Westberg’s first on-the-job experiences when she joined the San Diego Park in the 1990s.